“Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life’s coming attractions.” – Albert Einstein
I asked in my last post if any of you liked to know about how and why someone becomes a writer. Some of you – okay, two or three of you — said you enjoyed knowing a writer’s beginnings and path to becoming a writer. So, I decided why not share my writing beginnings as I did Saturday for my book party and as I have many times when I’m doing a book talk.
Perhaps because I love hearing about others path to writing and eventually writing a book or many books, I expect others to feel the same way. But then I like to hear why people decide to be a nurse or doctor, a preacher or a policeman, or – well, any occupation. I just like hearing other people’s stories. I might be assuming too much when I feel others, especially readers and writers, want to know why I love putting my fingers on a keyboard and letting words flow from my head to those fingers and start making a story on my monitor screen.
Of course, there were no monitor screens back all those years ago when I had dreams of being a writer and set out on the writing path. I love words. I love putting words together to make a story.
I don’t know exactly how old I was when I decided to write a book. I’m guessing around ten or eleven. I loved to read and had a book in my hands every moment I could. I liked reading Hardy Boy mysteries, and I thought it would be fun to be a Hardy girl. I never wanted to be be a boy, but I did think it would be great fun to solve a mystery. Since it was unlikely I’d have that opportunity, thank goodness, since there wasn’t much mysterious going on out on the farm where I grew up, I decided to write my own mystery. Naturally, I made myself the main character. A much cuter, smarter, and way less shy girl than I actually was. I roped in my sister and cousin as sidekicks. We all picked fictional names for ourselves. I’ve always thought Ann was such a plain name. Then you’d think I’d pick something fancy as my fictional name. Nope. I picked Jo. Seemed to fight a preteen detective. I don’t remember the name my cousin chose, but I think my sister wanted to be Carrie.
And so I took up pen or pencil, found a wire-bound notebook and wrote those first beginning words – Chapter One. I’ve written those first words many, many times since then, but probably never again with so much innocent confidence that I would be able to write a mystery. A whole book. I was that sure the words would come and they did. I filled up page after page of the notebook. I let my sister and cousin read it. I let my aunt and mother read it. I loved writing those words, and I was soon telling people that when I grew up I wanted to live in an isolated cabin in the mountains with two or three dogs for company and write books. I have always had those two or three dogs, but never became the writing recluse I imagined then.
“Words are our most inexhaustible source of magic.” – J. K. Rowling”
Those magic words did start coming, one following the last. I’ve probably written several million words since then. Many of my books have 100,00 words. Often more. That means I have to scribble a line through the offending words that don’t belong in my stories. But that wasn’t a worry when I was filling up that notebook. Then every word was golden.
And so that was when I first took up pen and let the words flow. But what happened next? Come back next time to One Writer’s Journal and follow me on down the road to being a writer.
Did you ever want to write a book when you were young? Were you an avid reader the way I was?
Oh, and the picture is me pretending to write a story all those years ago.